Anonymous bug system

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 09/20/04 12:40, Tuukka M?kinen wrote:
> Speaking of Bugzilla and bug systems in general has any of you heard of 
> a bug system that allows easier user bug report? In Bugzilla one has to 
> first register to get an an account and then to understand that 
> overwhelming user interface. To a developer it's great but to Joe User 
> who just noticed this bug...

this is a concern of mine, but i'm quite happy with the new bug interface
in bugzilla 2.18.  is it perfect?  no.  you sacrifice a little simplicity
for power, and i don't really see anything, aside from maybe the asignee,
CC, depends on, and blocks fields, that could be removed without making it
hard to do advanced things.  i know mozilla has a guided bug report page in
their bugzilla; i'll look into getting ahold of it, or whipping up something
similar.

> With one or two programs it's not a problem but lets say I test then 
> different programs and find a bug or have a new feature idea. I would 
> quickly have account in dozen places for just one bug report.
> 
> So what I would like is a system where I could give my email address and 
> then I would be sent a one time password. That way it could be made sure 
> I use real address and I could be reached if more information is required.

the problem is that all these different pieces of software are written and
controlled by a bunch of different people.  it wouldn't be appropriate (or
possible) for a user to go to one place to to report a bug on, say, both xine
and xfdesktop.  at least with something like xfce you can have a single bug
account to report a bug anywhere in the desktop environment.

that brings up something else though - the xfce-goodies.  if the goodies
authors would like, i wouldn't mind creating an Xfce-Goodies product, and some
components, for them.  that would be good to unify xfce-related bug tracking.

as for the subject of this email, i'm not interested in allowing anonymous
bug reports.  with all the spam and crap floating around these days, i don't
think it's prudent.  i know Yet Another User Account is a pain, but, to be
honest, if someone's too lazy to do that, i'd not expect their bug reports to
be all that great.  at least with bugzilla (as opposted to mantis), it's set
up so anonymous users can _see_ bug reports, if not make them.  there's
apparently an extension/addon for bugzilla that will munge email addresses
on web pages, so i'll set that up ASAP.

	-brian